Tuesday, September 29, 2009

We continued our On The Farm theme, completed Creation Days 3-7, and had a lot of fun this week.

Izzie received the LeapFrog Zippity Interactive Learning System for her birthday from her grandparents. We finally got it hooked up and I am disappointed. After seeing the box, we were all very excited, but the excitement quickly wore off. It's not very user friendly, games are not truly interactive, and it did not hold Izzie's attention. Looks like we'll be taking it back.

Izzie and Mac both enjoyed playing with the muscial eggs. Click here for more details.

Izzie is able to work this entire puzzle by herself...well, Mac helps too!

I found this great workbook at Walmart. Izzie has really enjoyed working with it independently. I took Shannon's advice at Growing and Learning By Leaps and Bounds and put each page in a sheet protector and let her use a washable marker...instant RESUABLE workbook!

For open ended art this week, Izzie created farm animals with Play-doh.

Her newest favorite activity is working with the "How To Build An A" book, which was a birthday gift. This is a great pre-writing skill activity and Izzie really enjoys it!

I found this Heads and Tails activity at 1+1+1=1. I attached magnets to the back, which worked well with the white board.

Izzie played with the Counting Chicks game. For more details click here.

For our weekly stART project, we read Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm, created a Mrs. Wishy Washy paperplate, made and played in mud pudding, and enjoyed eating mud pudding with animals crackers. For more pictures and details of this activity, click here.

In addition, we completed Creation Days 3-7. Click here to see Izzie's acitivities for each day.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Izzie has been using this activity for counting practice. She rolls the dice, counts the dots on the dice, then counts the correct number of chicks to put into the tray. I've been encouraging her to use the tweezers to pick up each chick and then place it in the tray, but she prefers to use her fingers.

I found the Dice (2 pack) at Dollar Tree, the tweezers (2 pack for $1) and the chicks (after Easter sale) at Michael's, and the tray (around Easter for $1) at Target.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I bought this great Farm Theme workbook at Wal-mart for $3.27. It has mazes, color and number skills, patterns, and more!

I took the advice of Shannon at Growing and Learning By Leaps and Bounds. I removed all the pages from the workbook and placed each in a page protector, then in a binder. Now, the workbook pages can be used over and over again!

Monday, September 21, 2009

I made these musical eggs at Easter, but decided to bring them back out to play with during our Farm Theme week. There are a total of 12 eggs or 6 matching pairs. The object of the game is to pair up the matching sound eggs. Izzie is doing very well matching up the eggs by the different sounds.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

As a busy Mom of two small girls, I'm always trying to find ways to make my life easier. I spend countless hours trying to create and find educational materials for my preschooler. Well, my schedule drastically improved after discovering Me & Marie. The creator of Me & Marie is a former teacher turned stay at home mom, who creates fantastic learning aids for toddlers and preschoolers. There are several learning packs to choose from including, colors, shapes, and holiday themes. Each learning pack comes in PDF form with a ton of material!

After receiving the The Color Green Learning Pack in PDF form, it took me only about 90 minutes to completely put together the pack, which included printing, assembling, and laminating. As suggested by Me & Marie, I placed all the learning materials in a file folder and glued the provided title to the front of the folder. Each Color Learning Pack is overflowing with fun and creative ideas to do with your child and amazing artwork and designs. The Color Learning Pack included a page of instructions and helpful hints to aid in the assembling and the use of each activity.

The Color Learning Pack included a page titled, Fun With Green that listed 16 different ways to bring the color green into my child's daily life. A few to mention were to wear green clothing, cut a green apple in half and use it to make green apple prints using green paint, and create green pudding for finger painting and eating too!

I really like that each each Color Learning Pack also contains a color recipe that is designed for your child to help cook. The Color Green Recipe was for painting bread with green homemade edible paint! My preschooler was thrilled with this recipe! There is also a Song Sheet included for the color of choice.

The Color Learning Pack also has Color Word Cards that were designed to help each child recognize objects in the target color. I laminated, cut apart, and placed in a pocket chart.

In addition, there is a Color Book designed for your child to color. I wanted Izzie to be able to reuse her book, so I laminated each page and decided not to staple the book together.

There were also 6 Color Puzzles included in the Color Learning Pack.

Each Color Learning Pack also contains a Flipbook and suggests you to stack the 6 individual pictures on top of the bottom base and staple. I had laminated these pieces and found it difficult to staple it together to make a flipbook. So, I decided to use the pieces in a pocket chart.

I used the Flipbook pieces for picture identification and speech pronunciation with my preschooler. I would say, "A frog is green", then Izzie would find the frog and place it over the base caterpillar. It worked well with her and was great speech practice.

Furthermore, the Color Learning Pack included a Matching File Folder Game with great graphics. It pleased me that a title for the front and tab of the file folder was included.

The File Folder Game was great to use for object identification and speech pronunciation too!

A Color Poster was created in the Color Learning Pack for your child to glue items of the target color on to. We searched through old magazines to find different green objects. This was Izzie's favorite activity in the Color Green Learning Pack!

Searching and gluing...

Izzie's completed Green Color Poster!

The Color Learning Packs created by Me & Marie are wonderful additions to your Preschool teaching materials! Each pack is overflowing with ideas and projects for your child. For me, the best thing about the Color Learning Packs is that everything is there and I only need 90 minutes of my time to put together a great educational learning tool for my child and she can use it for countless hours of learning!

1. Mandatory: visit Me & Maireand then come back and leave a comment stating what Color Learning Pack you would prefer.2. Leave your child's favorite color.3. Make a purchase from Me & Marie during the giveaway (please leave comment stating that you have made a purchase).4. Follow Izzie, Mac and Me blog.5. Blog about the Me & Marie Color Learning Pack giveaway on your blog.

The giveaway will close at midnight on Wednesday, September 23. One lucky reader will be randomly drawn.

Disclaimer: The product reviewed was provided for me free of charge in return for writing a review and hosting a giveaway.

I will be posting about the Red Color Learning Pack at the end of September, the Orange Learning Pack in October, and the Yellow Learning Pack in November. No giveaways during these posts, but each post will contain a lot of great ideas for each target color.

About Me

I am a former teacher turned stayed at home mom of two adorable girls, Izzie and Mac. I have been married for 11 years to my wonderful, supportive, and loving husband. I'm always looking for great educational materials and resources, fun activities and crafts, and tasty recipes!